Wrong love 2

Chapter Two: Before The World Changed

Orion came to her room at eight.

He didn't knock — he never knocked, had never seen the point of knocking on a door in his own house, a habit that had irritated Elara for the better part of three centuries and that she had long since accepted was simply part of having Orion as a brother.

He came in and stood at the foot of her bed and looked at her with those dark eyes that were older than most of what currently existed on the surface of the earth and said —

"Get up. Get dressed. And do not leave this house."

Elara looked at him from the bed.

Blue-black pixie cut hair. Dark eyes already clear because she hadn't been fully asleep — she'd felt something at the edges of the bond an hour ago, a disturbance, nothing she could fully name but enough to keep her in that shallow half-rest that her instincts retreated to when they weren't satisfied with the state of the world.

"Good morning to you too," she said.

"Elara."

"What happened."

Orion looked at her for a moment. That specific look — four centuries older than her, four centuries more of everything the world had ever produced, and still somehow capable of looking at his little sister like she was the thing most worth protecting in it.

"Malachar's children," he said. "Both of them. Last night."

The words landed in the quiet of the bedroom like stones dropped into still water.

Elara went very still.

"Both," she said.

"Both."

"Who—"

"It doesn't matter who," Orion said. Too quickly. Too smooth. The specific cadence of someone editing in real time. "What matters is that Malachar has sent the call and the situation outside this house is going to deteriorate very quickly and I need you to stay inside while I—"

"Orion."

"—deal with certain things that require my attention and—"

"Orion." Sharper.

He stopped.

She looked at him.

"Who," she said again.

He held her gaze for a moment.

Then —

"Stay inside," he said. "I mean it, Elara. Do not open that door for anyone."

He turned and walked out before she could push it further.

She heard the front door close thirty seconds later.

The house settled into silence around her.

She sat on the edge of the bed and turned the gold ring on her finger and thought about the way Orion had said it doesn't matter who with the careful precision of someone who had decided she didn't need a specific piece of information right now.

She thought about what specific piece of information would make Orion decide she didn't need it.

She thought about the Ryder family.

About a smile that never connected to anything behind it.

About Max.

Her jaw tightened.

She already knew.

She was standing at the window twenty minutes later when she felt him.

The bond — that warm constant north-east pull — shifting, moving, coming toward her with the focused urgency of someone who had somewhere to be and had decided this was it.

She felt herself exhale before she'd made a conscious decision to.

His car appeared at the end of the street four minutes later.

She was already at the top of the stairs when the knock came.

She opened the door.

He stood on her doorstep in the January cold — jacket on, dark hair slightly wind-caught, silver eyes finding her face immediately the way they always did, like every room recalibrated itself around her location and he simply followed the reading.

He looked at her.

She looked at him.

The bond ran warm and immediate between them — no distance, no interference, just the living connection of two people standing close enough that it didn't have to work very hard.

"Orion's gone," she said.

"I know," he said. "I waited."

She stepped back from the door.

He came inside.

He didn't say anything about Max.

She didn't ask.

They both already knew everything the other knew and the morning had already been full of heavy things and there was — she felt it through the bond, felt it in the specific quality of why he had come here instead of anywhere else he could have been right now — a different reason for this visit.

Not information.

Not strategy.

Her.

He had come because she was here and the world was on fire and he was Jace and when the world caught fire Jace Ryder apparently came to her kitchen and stood with his hands wrapped around a mug of coffee she'd made without asking if he wanted it and looked at her across the counter like she was the only fixed point in a morning that had stopped making sense.

She leaned against the opposite counter.

Looked at him.

"How bad," she said quietly.

"Bad," he said. "Malachar is moving. Nathan is— " He paused. "Dealing with it."

"And Max."

Something moved in his jaw.

"Gone," he said. "Again."

She nodded.

Turned the ring on her finger.

He watched her do it — those silver eyes tracking the movement with the soft focused attention he gave things that mattered to him — and set the mug down.

"Come here," he said quietly.

She looked at him.

"Jace—"

"Elara." Not a command. Something quieter than that. "Just — come here."

She crossed the kitchen.

He met her halfway — hands coming up to frame her face the moment she was close enough, tilting her up to him, silver eyes moving over her features with that look. The real one. The one that lived underneath everything else and only came out in rooms like this, in moments like this, when the world had gotten loud enough that the walls came down by necessity.

"I'm okay," she said softly.

"I know," he said. "I can feel it."

"Then why do you look like that."

"Like what."

"Like you're checking," she said.

His thumbs traced slow lines across her cheekbones.

"Because feeling it and seeing it," he said quietly, "are two different things. And I needed to see it."

She held his gaze.

At this wolf who had driven here the moment Orion's car left the street because the bond told him she was alone and the world was on fire and apparently neither of those things was acceptable without him doing something about it.

"You're ridiculous," she said softly.

"Probably," he said.

And kissed her.

It started soft.

The way their kisses sometimes started when the world had been heavy — not hungry, not urgent, just present. Just the specific relief of two people who had been apart for a morning that felt longer than it was, closing the last distance between them with something that didn't need to perform anything.

Then the bond woke up.

It always woke up.

The warmth of it spreading outward from her chest the moment his mouth was on hers — slow at first, then not slow, that familiar ignition that had no off switch and no interest in being reasonable about timing or circumstance or the fact that it was nine in the morning and the world outside was actively deteriorating.

The bond had never cared about any of those things.

His hands slid from her face to her waist and she went — both hands in his jacket, pulling him closer, the kiss deepening into something that had stopped being soft without either of them making a conscious decision about it.

He walked her back until the counter met her and then his hands were on the counter either side of her and she was looking up at him and his silver eyes were dark and the bond was doing that thing — that full consuming thing it did when they were this close and this unheld and the world outside had temporarily ceased to exist —

"Elara," he said against her mouth.

"Don't," she said.

"Don't what."

"Don't think," she said. "Not about Max. Not about Malachar. Not about any of it. Not yet."

He looked at her.

At the gold ring on her finger where her hand gripped his jacket.

At the blue-black pixie cut hair and the dark eyes and the vampire who was supposed to be his enemy and was instead the only thing that made sense in a morning that had stopped making sense entirely.

Something in him made a decision.

"Not yet," he agreed.

And the bond erupted.

What followed belonged to them.

To the quiet of her house with Orion gone and the front door locked and the January cold pressing against the windows and none of it mattering at all. To the specific stolen quality of a moment taken from a morning that had no right to contain something this good — warm and deep and consuming in the way that only the bond could make things, his feelings bleeding into hers and hers into his until the line between them dissolved completely.

His lips at her jaw. Her neck. The place beneath her ear that undid her every time without exception.

Her hands in his hair.

His voice — low, rough, saying her name like it was the only word that had ever mattered —

The bond pulled sharply.

Not between them — outward. External. Something pressing against the edges of their world from outside it.

Jace stilled first.

That thousand year old predator instinct surfacing through everything else, pulling his attention toward the window before his mind had fully caught up.

Elara felt it half a second later.

Movement. Outside. Close.

They looked at each other.

The moment — warm and stolen and entirely theirs — still present but shifted now, reality pressing back in at the edges the way it always eventually did.

Jace exhaled slowly.

Pressed his lips to her forehead.

Held them there.

"The world," she said quietly into his chest.

"The world," he confirmed.

She closed her eyes for exactly three more seconds.

Let herself have them.

Then she straightened.

Looked up at him.

Silver eyes looking back down at her — soft, present, carrying in them the full weight of everything this morning had been and everything the day ahead was going to require.

"Together," she said.

He reached up and tucked a strand of her blue-black hair behind her ear — such a small thing, such a quiet thing — and looked at her with that expression she was going to carry inside her chest for as long as she existed.

"Together," he said.

Outside the world was already moving.

They went to meet it.